India-China Media Markets

The story compares the Chinese online/digital media market with the Indian market, and based on raw numbers, China’s way ahead of the game, both in terms of the number of users and revenues. In China, with all its restrictions, total online revenue hit $1.1 billion last year. India, an English-speaking democracy that allows freer flow of information, had online revenue of just $93 million.

Venture-capital firms made $177 million in Internet-related investments in China in 2003 and 2004, four times more than the $44 million India attracted, according to Asian Venture Capital Journal, a Hong Kong-based trade publication.

China’s online revenue – which includes sales from advertising and from Internet gaming and wireless services – grew 35 percent last year to $1.1 billion and will rise 30 percent in 2005, according to MindShare

It is, simply (or not so simply put) an infrastrucutral issue, so in some ways not a fair comparison. Put it another way, you can have a controlled economy, and let the government pump it up, or you can let the entrepreneurs in the economy, with little help from the government, try and build it from ground up.